Unfortunately, having a surgical procedure performed on the wrong person, or at the wrong site on a person, occurs all to frequently. Attempts have been made to prevent such surgical errors from occurring. Many of these involve marking a portion of a persons body as the correct site for a surgical procedure, or marking a site that might be mistaken for the procedure site as an incorrect site. Examples of marking apparatus and methods can be found in U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 09/865,563, 10/108,320, 10/112,235, 10/423,803, and 10/444,532. Another approach, described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/638,245, involves placing necessary surgical tools inside a container with reminders relating to the person, procedure, and site the tools are to be used on or for. Yet another approach, described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/446,007, involves attaching a microchip containing patient and procedure related information to a patient for removal and scanning just prior to surgery.
Despite such attempts at preventing surgical errors from occurring, it is believed that the occurrence of such errors can be further reduced through the use of appropriate apparatus and methods. The present invention attempts to provide such methods and apparatus.